Chapter 28
by jmsutherland
Summary: Harry starts to discover what's going on.


Page **12** of **12**

**Chapter XXVII**

Sally was playing with little Ironhammer while Angua caught up on her sleep upstairs and Carrot taught Wolfie how to use a pick in the back garden. It had already been a long day and it was only eight o'clock in the morning. It had begun at four o'clock the previous afternoon with her visit to the Egitto. She'd been through the Omnian Quarter before, lots of times, but she had never tarried overlong. She didn't know anyone there and she certainly wasn't going to eat in any of the restaurants. Vegetarian?! Yuck, yuck, yuck nasties. But this time was different, it was duty.

Lucy had told her that she'd asked Mrs. Zarkom about The Unpleasantness/The Trouble but had got no answer, and Patrick had reported the same about the Shivarananoms. She was hoping that her being on official business might prove more successful. On her way she thought she's check on the guards.

The Watch was always overstretched, even at the best of times, but Commander Carrot had decided he could spare a few –four- officers at all times to patrol the Egitto and they were always his best, or at least his scariest. On the Hubward side stood Lance Constable Feldspar, a troll of such immense size that he made Sergeant Detritus look like a little boy.

"Good afternoon, Lance Constable," she said.

Lance Constable Feldspar thought about this for a little while.

"Yes," he concluded. Feldspar was never a great one for conversation, but the summer heat really wasn't helping.

"Anything to report?"

There was a long pause.

"No, ma'am," he decided.

She thought about telling him that he didn't have to call her "ma'am" and that, in any case, if he wanted to address her formally he should call her "sergeant". In the end she decided that she didn't want to overtax him and, anyway, she really didn't have the time.

"Well, keep up the good work," she said and headed off.

"Yes," came the rumble from behind her a few seconds later.

On the Rimward side was Corporal Axegrinder, a dwarf whose temper was famously even shorter than his stature.

"Anything to report, corporal?"

"There'd better not be, sergeant" he growled.

"Please try not to frighten the natives," she urged.

"I am here to serve and protect," he said through clenched teeth.

"Glad to hear it," she said, "carry on."

"Just let them try it," he snarled.

Sally wondered if he ever beat himself up just to stay in shape.

A few streets along she spotted Lance Constable Architrave. She thought a gargoyle looked a little out of place, perched on top of a tenement building, but no one else seemed to notice. She decided to climb up rather than fly, as she wanted to keep her clothes on. It always annoyed her that Vlad, for example, could turn into a lot of bats, fly halfway across the city and reintegrate fully clad, whereas when she did it her clothes were always back where she'd started.

"Anything to report, Lance Constable?"

"Nushing sho far, Shargeant," he replied, "egryshing ish shtable."

"Glad to hear it," she said, "well, keep your eyes peeled."

"I gant peel my eyesh, Shargeant, lay only hag one layer. Not like yoursh."

Gods but gargoyles could be so literal.

"Well, just keep them open then."

"I gant shut dem as I gon't hag any eyelashesh."

But she was already back on the street. And then there was Sergeant Kubwa.

Sergeant Kubwa wasn't a giant, at least not technically. Giants lived in the frozen lands near the Hub. They were greenish-grey, fat, slow-moving, slow-witted, generally ugly and even less able to cope with the cold than trolls were. Sergeant Kubwa, by contrast, was all muscle and mahogany and came from Howondaland, and it didn't get much hotter than that…or him. Oops, did she just think that?

"Afternoon, Kubwa," she said. Being of equal rank they could be informal.

"Good afternoon, beautiful lady," he said –very informally- in his deep, resonant voice and beamed his wide, sparkling smile at her. Her heart jumped and her tummy fluttered. Or at least it would have done had she not been madly in love with Harry, of course. Sally reckoned he must have been six cubits high if he was a span and almost as broad across the shoulder as she was tall. She thought that three of her could have perched on one of his shoulders, even without turning into a lot of bats, and could have danced in the palm of his hand in her bare feet, wearing just a…stop it!

"Anything happening?"

"No, but I've noticed _things_ tend not to happen when I'm around. I can't think why that is."

"Nor can I," laughed Sally, "but I'm sure that should any _things_ happen you shall be able to cope with them."

"I'm sure I shall," he laughed back.

This was not a boast but a simple statement of fact.

"Goodbye, Big Man," she said, "have a nice evening."

"You too, little girl," he almost sang in his deep bass.

It took her a couple of seconds to skip out of his shadow.

Mr. and Mrs. Shivarananom looked a little frightened when Sally introduced herself at their door.

"Have we done something wrong?" asked Mr. Shivarananom.

"Oh, no no," she tried to reassure them, "The Watch is just trying to do its job better by finding out what citizens think about what we're doing and how we could improve it." It didn't sound very convincing, even to her.

"Oh, in that case you'd better come in."

It was true that Omnians were very bad a spotting lies, probably as they so seldom told them themselves.

"Would you like some tea?" asked Mrs. Shivarananom.

"Yes, please," said Sally, thinking, foolishly, that the less formal things were the better. They'd gone around the houses, tenements, backstreets and alleyways for a little while as they sipped their tea. She'd said what a pretty house they had and how neat and tidy she thought it was – this being something she really appreciated- and this had seemed to please them both equally. It was rumoured that Ominian men, at least those in exile, did almost half the housework. Just something else to make them appear alien to their fellow citizens. She'd also mentioned what a lovely area she thought they lived in, what with the streets being so clean and all. Again they'd both beamed at her, as though they were personally responsible which, it turned out, they were. They belonged to something called Neighbourhood Wash that made sure everything in the streets around them was spicker than a span. By this time she had begun to notice that the tea was beginning to have a rather odd affect on her, so she wasn't immediately sure if she'd actually noticed what she thought she'd noticed. Her vampy sense might have been dulled by drugs, after all. What she thought she'd noticed was a certain stiffening of manner when she'd asked how the children were getting on at school.

Now, according to her friend Susan, who was a teacher, Omnian children stored knowledge as though they were packing for a long camping holiday. Or, as Susan herself had put it: "as though they might have to leave in a hurry and only be allowed to take what was inside their heads". She doubted that Harangue was failing at mathematics or that Mortify and Disgrace weren't doing well at counting. She'd heard that Omnian children were being bullied at school and this seemed to support that rumour. But it was when she asked if there had been any problems with public order that it became clear.

"Oh, no trouble," said Mr. Shivarananom, emphatically.

"Though there was that bit of unpleasantness," said Mrs. Shivarananom, trying to be helpful.

"Yes, there was that," her husband agreed.

"But nothing since then," she continued, smiling, "The Watch has been looking out for us."

Sally wondered for a second if she was being facetious but decide not, the smile was too ingenuous.

"No, nothing since then," Mr. Shivarananom confirmed.

Sally remembered the _unpleasantness_, it had been a vicious mob with torches intent on looting, pillaging and then burning the whole Egitto to the ground. Fortunately it had been a fairly small mob and Vlad had managed to scare it away, and probably put the fear of Om into it too, but she was pretty sure that if not it, then something very like it would be back. Of course it wouldn't back while the likes of Marble, Axegrinder and Kubwa were patrolling. And then there was Lance Constable Bern Bernsson, or Bernie the Bolt, who could load and fire a crossbow so quickly that by the time you got around to being impressed by the speed you were already dead. And Corporal Granite, who wore a Leonardo Cap. This was a hat containing a strange device that could keep a troll's head cold for hours. Consequently, the corporal was able to accurately calculate the force of both the action and reaction of the punch, that was going to take your head off, even as he was throwing it. And then there was… oh, there were lots of them: humans, trolls, dwarfs, gargoyles, vampires, werewolves, bogeymen, zombies… The Watch had a lot of scary people on its books, and Carrot made sure they were all stationed in the Egitto at some point. But he knew, as she knew, as they all knew: it all depended on the size of the mob.

She realised fairly soon that the Shivarananoms weren't likely to tell her anything she didn't already know. Not if they could help it, anyway. So after thanking them for their time and draining the last of their, rather excellent, tea, she made her was –a trifle unsteadily- to her Secret Service meeting.

The Secret Service top brass: Kate, Patrick and she – and sometimes Harry - met in the back room of The Duck to share intelligence and plan strategy.

"No idea," said Kate, flatly.

"No idea about what?" asked Sally.

"About anything."

"That's rather sweeping. Are you saying you have no idea about…"

"Not me," Kate interrupted, "them, the enemy. They have no idea why they're doing what they're doing."

"Oh, that's ridiculous!" exclaimed Sally, "how can anyone not know why they're doing something?"

"You could ask Lucy," Patrick suggested.

"I'd ask you not to smirk!" Sally snapped at him.

"Hit a vein, did I?" he smirked.

"It's true enough, though," said Kate, "people often don't know why they do things, especially when they're drunk."

Here she spoke from long and bitter experience.

"So, are they drunk then, these anti-Omites?

It was a word Sally had read in _The Guardian_ and had found herself using more and more, that and _Omists_.

"Generally not," said Kate.

"That doesn't real help. So, you ask them why they hate Omnians and they say they have no idea?"

"Oh, they have lots of ideas," replied Kate, "but their ideas make absolutely no sense."

"How do you mean?" asked Sally.

"They say that Omnians take their jobs."

"Who does?"

"All of them," Patrick pitched in.

"I didn't realise there were that many opportunities for vegetarian chefs or bookbinders," said Sally.

"There aren't," Kate agreed.

"Silversmiths? Engravers? Watchmakers?"

"Not as many as you might think."

"I didn't think there were many at all."

"Then you were right."

"So what is it the Omnists actually do for a living?"

"Oh, lots of things," said Kate, "bricklayers, carpenters, plumbers…"

"Labourers," added Patrick, "ratcatchers, night-soilmen…"

"I did didn't realise that Omnians did much of any of those things."

"They don't," Kate said.

"I'm sorry," said Sally, even more flummoxed, "I'm not following this."

"But that's what it's all about," said Kate, "it's about following."

"Following whom?"

"Shopkeepers," said Patrick.

"Really? Well, there are quite a lot of Omnian shopkeepers, I suppose," Sally conceded, "so do people not like Omnian shopkeepers?"

"Oh, no, people do, generally, like Omnian shopkeepers: they're friendly, efficient and value for money."

"So, who doesn't like them?"

"Shopkeepers," said Patrick, "and this is where I come in. My task was to insinuate myself into, dishonest, exploitative and corrupt organisations, and that's shopkeepers for you. Oh, apart from Omnian shopkeepers, that is; they give you good stuff at a fair price and they do it with a smile."

"Then why don't people shop there?" Sally asked.

"Oh, they do," he assured her, "and that really annoys the other shopkeepers. They'd rather sell you crap at over-inflated prices and make out that they were doing you a favour…"

"As would we all," sighed Kate.

"Yes, quite," said Patrick, dubiously, "anyway, if there's anything a shopkeeper hates more than his customers, it's competition."

"Well, it's immoral," said Sally, "in fact it's downright disgusting, but it's not illogical."

"Oh, wait, I haven't finished," said Patrick, firmly, "you see, the Omnians are also a problem for the owners of: delicatessens, cheesemongers and wine-merchants."

"What!? How!?" Sally cried, incredulously, "Omnians don't eat meat, make cheese or sell wine. Are they confusing Omnia with Klatch, Genua and Quirm?"

"Ah," said Patrick, "this is where it all gets a bit strange."

"What do mean GETS?!" she wanted to know.

"It seems," Patrick continued, calmly, almost to counterpoint Sally's becoming increasingly fraught, "that there is an international conspiracy."

"You'll like this," said Kate with a wan smile and paused, "no, actually you'll hate it."

"What are you talking about!?" Sally demanded.

"It seems that an Omnian secret society…"

"The Quisition?" Sally interrupted.

"The Quisition wasn't secret," replied Patrick, "and in any case it no longer exists. The last I heard the society was called The Sequestration."

"Are you making this stuff up?" scoffed Sally.

"No," said Kate, "but somebody is."

"So who's behind it then? I don't mean the daft story; actually I do mean the daft story. Who made it up?"

"Well, that just brings us back to the start," Kate replied, "we have no idea."

"Do you mean Lord Bothermore isn't behind it, then?"

"No, he's not the leader," said Kate.

"The _leader-off_ maybe,"

"Meaning what?" Sally wanted to know.

"It's a phrase they use down the docks," Kate explained, "it means the person who starts a fight."

"But they don't follow him?" asked Sally, puzzled.

"No, he just stirs them up through his paper, but he's not the instigator…"

"Papers, surely?" Sally interrupted, "there's more than one, after all."

"Sort of," Kate sort of agreed, "but they all say the same thing.

"I suppose," Sally conceded, "though in slightly different language."

"Yes, granted: the ditch-diggers read _The Banner_, the shopkeepers read _The Post_, the accountants and shysters read _The Tribune _and the aristocrats read _The Chronicle._ But they all spout the stuff they read in the editorials virtually verbatim."

"That's Tsortian for…" Patrick began.

"I know what it means," snapped Sally. "And how many Omnians are accountants, shysters or aristocrats?"

"Not many, damn few and none at all," said Patrick.

"So, they're not stealing their jobs. And Bothermore's definitely not their leader?"

"Just another follower," said Kate, "though a particularly noisy one."

"Which brings us back to…"

"We have no idea," Patrick concluded.

"And what about these flags that I keep seeing?"

"The Black Cross, do you mean?"

"Yes."

"Same answer, I'm afraid. We don't know where they come from or what they mean, though the seem to be very popular."

"Have you asked them where all the flies are coming from?"

"No need to be flippant," said Patrick, surprised at his own hypocrisy.

"I'm serious," said Sally.

"Really?" asked Kate, "why?"

Sally shook her head as if to clear it:

"It's nothing, I suppose," she concluded, "So, what now?"

"We keep looking," said Patrick, "what else can we do?"

"Worry," said Sally.


End file.
